Rebecca sprinted down the car and without so much as a hitch in her stride, hurled a blast of magic at the men. Santa jerked backwards, releasing his hold on the little boy. Unconscious, the child slid to the floor, looking unbearably fragile but alive.
The gnome, though, focused fast. Snarling, he hissed, “Guardians!” and flung out a hand, deflecting Rebecca’s energy blast back at us. I activated my shield to protect us and the children sitting on the side bench.
As Rebecca’s magic attack dissipated, the gnome released a burst of his own demonic magic. My shield held, though I felt as if scalding acid had been sprayed over my mind. Rebecca’s steps faltered briefly. Then she sprinted out of the shielded area, caught up the little boy, and yanked him back to me.
I knelt beside the child, doing a quick diagnosis while maintaining the shield. He was dangerously depleted, but hadn’t suffered any injuries. I gave him a dose of vital energy, not enough for complete recovery, but sufficient to keep him stable. I couldn’t afford to give more.
I looked up to see Rebecca stalking toward the gnome, both hands locked on a business-like pistol. She must have used one hell of a don’t-see spell to get that through airport security!
“Release her!” Not waiting for a response, Rebecca fired into his chest at point blank range. The bullet was accompanied by a blast of hunter attack energy.
“Guardian bitch!” Though the gnome flinched back with a snarl, he didn’t seem to be seriously hurt.
Rebecca used his momentary distraction to sweep the blond girl up with one arm and dart back toward me. The gnome rose to his feet with a roar that rattled the windows. “Guardian hunter and healer together! Your souls will blend well!”
He began to swell in size, expanding till his head bashed into the ceiling, denting the patterned metal panel. Flinging his hands toward us, he screamed incomprehensible words, either profanity or demon spells, maybe both. Red light boiled from his palms down the length of the car. Rebecca barely managed to get herself and the unconscious girl inside my shielding before the corrosive magic hit.
I had been getting to my feet when the demon power struck, and it knocked me back onto the dirty carpeting. I gasped, feeling as if a huge beast had taken a bite out of my magic and vitality. I couldn’t hold out against many more assaults like this.
As I pulled the girl toward me, the demon’s magic deflected from my shielding in all directions. The red color morphed to a virulent, toxic green.
As the green energy swept over the toys, they came alive. Trains started whirling around the tracks, whistles blasting. The Napoleonic soldiers marched toward us, led by the high-kick ballerina from the music box, and the Victorian dolls began clambering down from their shelf, murderous red glints in their eyes. The demon laughed with vicious amusement as they headed for Rebecca, who was several feet in front of me.
Swearing, Rebecca swept her foot through the army of lead soldiers so that they knocked each other over like dominoes. A train flew off the track right toward her head. She knocked it out of the air with a hard fist. It spun into the wall, crushing some of the descending Victorian dolls.
The dolls who’d reached the floor were heading toward her, their mouths open to show sharp ceramic teeth. She yanked over a narrow side table to block them, then shoved the table into the wall with a crunching of ceramic heads.
As the rocking horse began moving toward Rebecca with frenzied movements, I diagnosed the little blond girl. She was near death, in much worse shape than the boy, and it took a dangerously large amount of my power to stabilize her. I was running on fumes now and not sure how much longer I could be effective.
I felt a touch on my forehead and Rebecca’s fiery magic flowed into me, restoring me enough to maintain the shields. I clambered to my feet. “Can we save the Santa?”
“If you can extend the shield over him, I think I can drive off the demon possessing him.”
She’d switched to mind talk, and I realized that she didn’t want the demon to know our plans. “Done.”
I stepped forward, moving the shield, and she knelt by the Santa. His hat, white hair, and beard had fallen off, leaving a pleasantly ordinary guy with receding brown hair. Rebecca clamped her hands on the side of his head and blasted him with a spell I’d never seen before. “Demon, begone!”
A whirl of red energy erupted from him and the toys redoubled their hysterical efforts to attack. I grabbed one of Santa’s arms and Rebecca took the other and we hauled him back to our end of the car, which allowed me to shrink the energy shield. Anything that saved power was welcome.
We’d moved so fast that the gnome hadn’t realized our intentions until we’d retrieved Santa. He bellowed like a freight train, then leaned forward to gobble the red energy from the air, the cords in his neck tightening as he swallowed. His form broadened, bulking up so that he looked like the Hulk.
”We need to get out of here!” I thought to Rebecca.
She bent over to slap Santa’s face while I moved to the four children who’d been watching blankly. Little children are easily enchanted, but the spells are also easily broken. I laid palms on the foreheads of the black girl and the redheaded boy and sent healing energy to dissolve the imprisoning spells.
They came awake instantly, looking around in confusion while I gave the same treatment to the other two children. The black girl cried, “My sister, where’s my sister?”
Before I could reply, she saw the little blond girl lying on the floor. “There you are! Melissa, what happened?” She tumbled to the floor and stroked the blond hair back from the other girl’s face. “Missy, are you all right?”
Sisters by adoption, I guessed, but sisters nonetheless. From the corner of my eye, I saw that Rebecca had pulled Santa to his feet. Beyond her, the demon had begun to bash on my shield. It would have collapsed at the first blow if Rebecca and I hadn’t been combining our powers.
The twin boy went to his brother. “Travis, you okay?”
“What happened?” the redheaded boy asked.
“You were kidnapped in the toy shop and brought down to an old tunnel,” I said, my gaze riveted on a quarter scale cannon that was rolling out of the far corner, its barrel aimed at us. “Help the other children and run! Outside this railroad car, you’ll see footprints in the dust. Go that way.”
The dark-skinned girl nodded and beckoned to the others. “Away now!”
The twin who hadn’t been energy drained pulled his brother to his feet. “This is the strangest birthday party we ever had, Trav!”
Santa spoke then. He was weaving on his feet, but he looked thoroughly human. “Sorry, guys, I thought it would be fun for you and your friends to see me play Santa before our party.” He glanced at Rebecca, and I saw that he had some idea of what had happened. “Can you hold that thing while we get away? I’ll call 911.”
He reached for his cell phone, but I shook my head. “There’s no signal down here. Just go!”
He nodded, scooped up the two smallest children, who were awake but dazed, and said, “When we get up to the surface again, cake and ice cream all around!”
With a banging of small feet, Santa and the children departed. I moved to Rebecca’s side and caught her hand. We were both down to the bottom of our energy reserves, but if we could manage for a few more minutes, at least the others could escape. After that—I didn’t want to think what would happen after that.
Rebecca kicked the rampaging rocking horse onto its side. As it bounced and whinnied furiously in its attempt to get upright, she thought, “The demon started as a human, so he should have a nervous system. Can you destroy nerves as well as heal them?”
I blinked. Killing wasn’t something most doctors studied. But maybe it would work here. “Let me take a look.”
Still holding Rebecca’s hand, I stepped forward and reached through my shield to grab the gnome’s wrist. It was as thick as a human neck, and when I touched, agony coursed through me. Startled, he looked at my gripping hand, then bent and open
ed a mouth full of razor teeth to bite my hand off.
I did my best to keep my hand away from those teeth as waves of agony shuddered through me. Since we were bonded, Rebecca gasped, too. But my scan revealed that whatever kind of creature he had become, he still had nerves to make his ugly body operate. Drawing hard on Rebecca’s magic, I blasted hunter attack power through him like a flamethrower, burning the neural network to charred black threads.
The gnome spasmed backward and howled with ear shattering force. As the homicidal toys stopped in their tracks, his wrist crumbled under my hand. I watched in horror as he disintegrated into a pile of black ash. I had just used my God-given healing power to kill a living being.
I folded onto my knees and threw up. Then slowly, like a marionette whose strings had been cut, I collapsed into darkness.
***
“Drink this,” Rebecca ordered.
I realized that she was supporting my back and tilting a thermos of warm coffee to my lips. Feeling desert parched, I swallowed automatically. Starbucks mocha latte. She must have filled up her thermos at the airport before starting her chase. I’m glad she hadn’t offered it earlier, because I needed it even more now. Another swallow, and I began to feel warmth and strength returning.
A few blinks brought Rebecca’s worried face into focus. “Shouldn’t you be as flattened as I am?” I croaked.
Relieved, she sat back on her heels. “Close, but you did more of the heavy lifting.” She placed the thermos into my clasp.
Using both hands, I drained the rest of the latte. We were on the floor outside the railroad car, so petite Rebecca must have dragged my gangling body outside. I was grateful not to have to see the demonic toys and the horrible pile of black ash.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said, my voice working a little better. “I imagine that by now Santa and the kids are on the surface trying to explain all this to a policeman. Did you have a chance to adjust their memories a bit?”
She nodded. “They’ll remember a simple kidnapping and a very fast rescue. Exciting and scary, but no real harm done.”
I struggled creakily to my feet. No harm done? We were now bound together for as long as we both lived.
“Is that such a bad thing?” Her thought was shy.
For the first time I had the leisure to study my companion in mayhem. Rebecca had an elfin face and light gray eyes. I reached out to touch her tangled dark red hair to see if it was as silky as it looked. “Not a bad thing at all.”
Just looking at her made me feel better and stronger. She was also, I realized, the hottest babe I’d ever seen.
“That’s rather rude of you, Simon.” Rebecca’s mental words were prim, but infused with warmth.
“Sorry. I’m new to this mind talk thing.” A little uncertain, I continued, “You realize that we have the next thing to an alchemical marriage?”
“My parents have an alchemical marriage and I’ve always wanted the same, but I never met a man I could imagine that happening with.” Her smiled quirked up enchantingly. “To be honest, I would never have picked you as the ultimate partner, but now that you’re here…” She blushed. “You seem just right.”
“I never thought I’d want to be with a scary Guardian hunter, but I see that I can be useful patching people up in your wake.” I put one arm around her, then the other. As she settled against me, I realized I’d never felt so good in my life even though I was exhausted. We’d risked our lives to save lives, and I sensed a lifetime of reward ahead. There was still so much we didn’t know about each other’s lives, but our souls—those were in harmony. “I don’t ever want to let you go.”
She breathed a soft laugh. “I don’t think you could get rid of me if you tried. We hunters are very stubborn.”
“Let’s just leave and let Santa sort out the kidnapping. I’m too tired to talk plausibly to policemen.” I rested my head on the top of her head. “I have a hotel room with a nice king-sized bed not far away. Care to join me there? We can further our acquaintance in the morning when we’ve both had some rest.”
“An excellent plan.” She brushed a swift kiss on my lips, and I realized I wasn’t quite as exhausted as I thought. She continued, “Writers like me can write anywhere.”
“Good. Have you ever been to Boston? I think you’d like it.”
She laughed, and the crystalline delight of that sound resonated in every cell of my body. “I love Boston.”
“We’ll spend Christmas in New York, then I’ll take you there,” I promised. “Merry Christmas, Rebecca.” I grinned. “I’m thinking of Charles Dickens. You’re my ghost of Christmas present.”
She smiled back with deep promise. “And you’re my ghost of Christmas future.”
Introduction to “Chains”
I seem to have the theater on my mind of late. My upcoming story in the fifth volume of Fiction River, Hex in the City, edited by Kerrie L. Hughes, concerns the London stage. “Chains” takes place in a New York theater. As you can probably tell, I love theater. I was a goggle-eyed college-age hanger-on at meetings that led to the establishment of the Tony-Award winning American Players Theater in Spring Green, Wisconsin, and I’ve been around the theater’s periphery ever since. Many of my friends went on to careers as playwrights, and one wrote the book and lyrics for a marvelous off-Broadway musical. Every now and then I feel tempted to write a play, and then I remember how many novels I have to write and how much short fiction I’ve promised, and I set that dream aside for a while.
I currently write books in several series under many names. Readers know Kristine Kathryn Rusch mostly for her bestselling sf/f novels, and for award-winning short stories in every genre. I also have one kinda sorta contemporary romance, The Death of Davy Moss, published under the Rusch name. I write paranormal romances as the bestselling, award-winning Kristine Grayson, and romantic suspense as Kristine Dexter. My critically acclaimed Smokey Dalton mystery series, which I write as Kris Nelscott, is so dark that I have to write romances next to clear my palate.
I wrote “Chains” just after finishing the upcoming Dalton mystery, Street Justice, and some of that darkness remained. That’s why this story is both romantic suspense and dark paranormal.
Chains
Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Christmas seemed like the perfect time to be in New York, he had told his agent. Or maybe that was his manager. Or his handler. God, he couldn’t keep track of his people any more.
And when the hell did he get people, anyway?
He had been wrong. It was the loneliest time to be in New York.
Jamison Roth McKendrick, Jaime to his fans, Roth to his friends (what few there were left), sat in his dressing room at the recently renamed Mary Martin Theater and peered into the antique mirror the theater manager had installed especially for him.
***
When Roth had full stage makeup on his face, he looked odd. His skin was half a shade darker and this close, he could see the lines that photographers were so careful to airbrush out. His eyebrows, darkened with pencil, looked like creatures in a Disney nature film, and his mouth was bowed like a girl’s.
Only his blue eyes remained the same. They startled even him, not because they were (as the tabloids said) “a unique shade of blue,” but because they weren’t. His blue eyes were the only thing he had gotten from his father, and Roth hated the reminder.
“Excuse me?”
Roth closed those famous eyes for just a moment. The voice was young, and young meant he had to be somewhat polite. Jamison Roth McKendrick wasn’t known for polite, which was why he was sitting here on December 21st after having just performed a successful preview of his one-man show A Christmas Carol rather than at home in the bosom of his family.
Not that he had a family, with or without a bosom. The last bosom, in fact, had finalized her divorce from him in September, after much media fanfare. It didn’t matter to People or Extra or Entertainment Tonight that he and the bosom had been separated for more than a year; onl
y that she had sued for part of his extensive fortune and had, sadly for her, lost.
God Bless Our Prenups, Every One.
“Mr. McKendrick?” the young voice asked.
So, not a fan or a friend, but something other. Not a colleague or a minion either. Too young.
He mentally clothed himself in Jaime McKendrick, and became, for just a moment, a Star—something bright and shining in the firmament, or at least, something Very Famous and worth catering to.
A thin girl sat on top of a pile of coats that Roth had stored in the corner of his dressing room. She was in that intermediate age—she could have been a tween, a teen, or hell, maybe even a young adult; he couldn’t tell at first glance. What he could tell was this: She was too young to be alone with him.
Visions of paparazzi danced in his head.
“Can you help me?” she asked.
He wanted to say a firm and surly no, worthy of Scrooge. After all, he’d just been channeling the man onstage. Of course, he’d also been channeling Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim and was on the verge of channeling the Christmas goose, at least according to his unbelievably favorable review in, of all places, The New York Times.
But Roth couldn’t say no. Not in a firm and surly way. Not in any way. Nor could he touch the girl or approach her or do anything untoward. He needed to play this smart, although he had never quite figured out what smart was in this circumstance.
Except he had learned, through hard experience, that everyone—teens in particular—came attached to cell phones, and cell phones had cameras, and the cameras linked to the Internet in less than ten seconds.
One mistake, one wrong word, and he would be the wrong kind of Internet sensation in less than 24 hours.
Apparently, he was silent for too long because the girl stood. Taller than he expected, but painfully thin. A cheap coat though—he always knew coats—and well-worn winter boots beneath blue jeans ironed to a crease.
Christmas Ghosts - Fiction River Page 14
